Lighting the way to better energy efficiency

At TJX, delivering real value every day lives at the heart of our business – whether that means providing value when customers shop our stores, or bringing value to the world by doing what’s right for the business and the environment.

Take, for example, our efforts around reducing our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and improving our operational efficiency through our focus on energy-efficient lighting. With electricity making up approximately 90% of our total GHG emissions, we see value in improving lighting efficiency, and we have ongoing initiatives to upgrade and retrofit our stores, home offices and distribution centers with light-emitting diode (LED) fixtures, which use significantly less electricity than traditional light bulbs.

This global effort is taken seriously across our regions, and in the U.S., we are proud to say that, as of the end of 2017, almost every one of our 3,000 stores had some type of LED fixture installed in the store, and all of our new stores and distribution centers are predominantly lit by LED lighting. In the U.K., we began working with LED lighting in August 2016, and, over the course of 18 months, have converted over 120 stores to our new lighting. We have set an ambitious goal for 2018 to retrofit 60 stores in just seven weeks! Additionally, with the successful testing of LED lighting in the U.K., we have been using LEDs in all new stores opening across Europe as well.

“Lighting in our stores is a critical design element. It’s very important that we achieve the desired aesthetics and maintain the integrity of the shopping experience for our customers.”

Andy Perrin,

Assistant Vice President, Energy Supply and Technology

More than just swapping out light fixtures

Installing LEDs isn’t just about light fixtures. We spend a lot of time working with our vendors in the research and development phase to give them guidance as they design a look specifically for our stores to really enhance the customer experience.

“Lighting in our stores is a critical design element. It’s very important that we achieve the desired aesthetics and maintain the integrity of the shopping experience for our customers. We work closely with Store Design and Planning, and all new lighting goes through rigorous field testing before we make any changes or adjust our lighting specifications,” said Andy Perrin, Assistant Vice President, Energy Supply and Technology.

The payoff

Replacing fluorescent fixtures with LED fixtures typically reduces energy usage for lighting by, on average, 40-70%, which can reduce total energy usage in a store by approximately 20-30%. In the U.S. in 2017, replacing lighting in existing stores translated to a reduction of approximately 22.6 million kilowatt hours of electricity, an estimated $2.7 million in savings. In the U.K., we are actually seeing better than average reductions, with approximately 60-70% less energy being used for lighting in certain stores and as much as a 40-50% reduction in such stores’ total energy consumption because we are finding that we can also reduce the number of light fittings due to the quality of lighting with the new LEDs.

In addition to the savings from using less electricity, LED lighting lowers costs by out-lasting traditional lighting fixtures. As a result, we believe we are realizing lower maintenance and repair costs due to the durability and long lifespan of LED fixtures.

Ongoing efforts

Our commitment to energy management was founded more than 25 years ago when we dedicated resources to an Energy Management team in the U.S. Since then, Energy Management has been rolled out across our global operations as well. These groups are responsible for managing our energy consumption and costs, analyzing and improving current operational performance, and testing, prioritizing and implementing energy efficiency technologies and products. LED upgrades are just one of the many energy efficiency programs managed by these groups, which help us drive towards reaching our 2020 goal to reduce GHG emissions per dollar of revenue by 30% against a 2010 baseline.

Fast Facts

LED is a type of solid-state lighting that uses a semiconductor to convert electricity into light and can cut energy use by more than 80 percent.

Good-quality LED bulbs can last more than three years if run 24 hours a day, seven days a week - 25 times longer than traditional light bulbs.